Italy 1994!

[palandio]

Don't be fooled by the red in the South. Much of it can be explained by centrist Pact for Italy strength or by Forza Italia and National Alliance running separately in some ridings.

For comparison: In Italy as a whole the center-left Progressives got 32.8% of the FPTP vote, resulting in only 164 out of 475 FPTP seats.

In Abruzzo the Progressives got 33.6% of the FPTP, which is only slightly above average. But this resulted in 10 out of 11 FPTP seats, because National Alliance (24.1%) and Forza Italia (22.5%) ran separately and the Pact for Italy scored 17.6%, above its national average of 15.6%.

Campania 2 was even more extreme, with the Progressives at only 26.7%, six points below the national average. But they got 12 seats out of 22, because National Alliance (21.7%) and Forza Italia (19.8%) ran separately and the Pact for Italy scored 19.7%, above its national average.

In Calabria Forza Italia and National Alliance ran together, scoring 33.8%. But what allowed the Progressives to win 10 out of 17 seats with just 34.6% of the vote was the Pact for Italy performance (20.1%).

I don't deny that the place where the center-left lost the election was the North and that its results in the South were not that bad. But the map (I love that map nonetheless!) makes the center-left seem stronger in the South than it really was.

[palandio]

I think that in 1994 the SVP was still somehow allied with what had remained from the old Democrazia Cristiana, that is the Italian People's Party, which was part of the Pact for Italy alliance. At least the Pact didn't field candidates in the province of Bolzano/Bozen. The chamber constituency of Bolzano/Bozen was contested by four major candidates (Progressives, SVP, Forza+Lega, National Alliance) which allowed the neo-fascist to prevail with 32.1% of the vote. (Recall that Berlusconi's Forza Italia was allied to the National Alliance only in the Center-South, where the Lega Nord didn't contest. In the North Forza was allied with the Lega. National Alliance and Lega Nord at that time just wouldn't run together.)

From 1995 on the majority of the Italian People's Party oriented itself towards the center-left and so did the SVP.

[palandio]

Looking at the 1994, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2008 and 2013 elections gives the following picture for Lazio as a whole:

1994 [Counting PdL, PdBG, AN and FI as Center-right]: Center-right 2 points above their national average, but Center-left 5 points above their national average. What makes Lazio look so right-wing is that there was only PdBG running instead of PdL vs. AN vote splitting like in the North.

1998 [Counting Olive Tree and Progressives as Center-left]: Center-right 7 points above national average, center-left 3 points above. But you have to take into account that the Lega Nord (which is close to non-existent in Lazio) ran separately and got 11% which dragged down the national center-right result considerably, but not the Lazio center-right result.

2001: Both coalitions outperforming by ca. 2 points.

2006: Same close race in Lazio (as a whole) as in the national average.

2013: Center-right underperforming a point, center-left almost exactly on the national average.


Summary: Lazio as a whole has voted very close to the national average during the Second Republic.

What gives Lazio a certain right-wing bent is that it has been a stronghold of post- and neo-fascist forces.

The M5S surge on the other hand has been largely transversal through the political spetrum, taking from both the center-left and the center-right. I hope that this doesn't sound too much like the typical Grillini talking points ("not left, not right"), because it isn't meant to. What I want to say is that when you say Grillo is turning Lazio less left-wing, you should also say he is turning it less right-wing. But that's both quite questionable assertions.

And when it comes to the referendum: Yes, it's true that Yes was strongest in Toscana and Emilia-Romagna. But the No supporters were an unholy left-right-fringe alliance. It was not left vs. right. (That being said the referendum seemed to me like a stupid political stunt and left me rather stumped.)

[palandio]

It seems like I wasn't clear in my previous post so I'll rephrase it.

If you don't consider Rome, Lazio leans center-right, and in particular, fascists or post-fascists have always had very positive results (MSI, AN, FdI, La Destra), especially in the Latina province.

The Rome province is, by far, the most left-wing of the region. Nonetheless, in more recent years, the M5S have managed to make inroads which they haven't really managed to replicate in the rest of the region.

I fully agree.

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To me it seems that historically speaking the absolute center-left strongholds are not in the city center itself, but in the Eastern semi-center (S. Lorenzo, Pigneto), eastern semi-periphery and parts of the south-western semi-center (Testaccio, Portuense), which are all historically quite working-class. The northern semi-center seems like it has always been quite bourgeois and right-wing. I'm also wondering how much the social composition in different parts of Rome has changed in the recent two decades. I would immagine gentrification processes in some of the semi-center working-class quarters on the one hand. And on the other hand urbanification processes in the formerly semi-rural periphery, leading to an influx of (on average) rather poor people who couldn't afford to live closer to the center. When looking at some of the housing development near the Eastern part of the GRA, a lot of it seems quite recent to me (and also quite criminal from an urbanistic point of view). And that seem to be the areas where M5S is strongest.

[palandio]

Thank you, very interesting! Seems like a difficult environment for the PD, if it is becoming weaker both in the growing periphery and in the former left-wing strongholds in the semi-center.